Quotes about change

Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.

— A Course In Miracles

The industrial landscape is already littered with remains of once successful companies that could not adapt their strategic vision to altered conditions of competition.

— Abernathy

It seemed that each time we would become proficient at a given task there would be a change made for no apparent reason. It sometimes appeared that changes were made simply because sufficient time had elapsed since the last change. And then our efforts would begin again from the beginning.

— General Adalphos

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.

— Saul Alinsky

Who we are never changes. Who we think we are does.

— Mary S. Almanac

That's the risk you take if you change: that people you've been involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do will come along.

— Lisa Alther

So long as a person is capable of self-renewal they are a living being.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

The need for change bulldozed road down the center of my mind.

— Maya Angelou

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

— Isaac Asimov

The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything or nothing.

— Lady Nancy Astor

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

— Marcus Aurelius

That things are changed, and that nothing really perishes, and that the sum of matter remains exactly the same, is sufficiently certain.

— Francis Bacon

Everybody wants to do something to help, but nobody wants to be the first.

— Pearl Bailey

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

— James Baldwin

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

— James Baldwin

People can cry much easier than they can change.

— James Baldwin

The most useless are those who never change through the years.

— Sir James M. Barrie

When you're through changing, you're through.

— Bruce Barton

The things that have come into being change continually. The man with a good memory remembers nothing because he forgets nothing.

— Augusto Roa Bastos

The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it.

— Jean Baudrillard

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

— Simone De Beauvoir

If one desires a change, one must be that change before that change can take place.

— Gita Bellin

Any change, even for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

— Arnold Bennett

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly

— Henri L. Bergson

There has never been a time when you and I have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. As the same person inhabits the body through childhood, youth, and old age, so too at the time of death he attains another body. The wise are not deluded by these changes.

— Bhagavad Gita

There is no new thing under the sun. [Ecclesiastes 1:9]

— Bible

To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the rising and falling tides (of affairs), so that with nature and law at his back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes the victim of the tides when he should be their Master.

— Helena Petrova Blavatsky

Nothing is lasting but change; nothing perpetual but death.

— Ludwig Borne

The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance.

— Nathaniel Branden

Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others.

— Jacob M. Braude

Change is difficult but often essential to survival.

— Les Brown

You have the power to change.

— Les Brown

You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change.

— Les Brown

Weep not that the world changes -- did it keep a stable, changeless state, it were cause indeed to weep.

— William C. Bryant

We are restless because of incessant change, but we would be frightened if change were stopped.

— Lyman L. Bryson

Everything changes, nothing remains without change.

— Buddha

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

— Warren Buffett

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

— Edmund Burke

A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

— Edmund Burke

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

— Carol Burnett

It's hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.

— George Burns

Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self -- a felt void or need; second, a decision to change to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change -- the willful act of making the change, doing something.

— Leo Buscaglia

We don't change what we are, we change what we think what we are.

— Eric Butterworth

Give wind and tide a chance to change.

— Richard E. Byrd

The lapse of ages changes all things -- time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself.

— Lord Byron

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.

— Thomas Carlyle

The true past departs not, no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but all is still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless change.

— Thomas Carlyle

Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same? Change, indeed is painful; yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.

— Thomas Carlyle

For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity.

— Joyce Cary

In pain is a new time born.

— Adelbert Von Chamisso

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

— Winston Churchill

Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.

— Karen Kaiser Clark

If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.

— Eldridge Cleaver

You do not notice changes in what is always before you.

— Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.

— Henry S. Commager

They must change who would be constant in happiness and wisdom.

— Confucius

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.

— Confucius

Only the wisest and the stupidest of men never change.

— Confucius

People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.

— Stephen R. Covey

Chords that were broken will vibrate once more.

— Fanny Crosby

Being willing to change allows you to move from a point of view to a viewing point -- a higher, more expansive place, from which you can see both sides.

— Thomas Crum

Don't fear change -- embrace it.

— Anthony J. D'Angelo

Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will remain constant.

— Anthony J. D'Angelo

The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.

— Dante Alighieri

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

— Clarence Darrow

It struck me while I was sitting here; everything changes but the sea.

— William B. Davis

I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.

— Jimmy Dean

We cannot become what we need to be, remaining what we are.

— Max Depree

Change happens in the boiler room of our emotions... so find out how to light their fires.

— Jeff Dewar

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

— Charles Dickens

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.

— Charles Dickens

Change is inevitable. Change is constant.

— Benjamin Disraeli

The search for static security -- in the law and elsewhere -- is misguided. The fact is security can only be achieved through constant change, adapting old ideas that have outlived their usefulness to current facts.

— William O. Douglas

Of the events of life we may have some control. but over the law of its progress none.

— John W. Draper

Change starts when someone sees the next step.

— William Drayton

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

— Peter F. Drucker

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

— Peter F. Drucker

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.

— Peter F. Drucker

Change is an easy panacea. It takes character to stay in one place and be happy there.

— Elizabeth C. Dunn

If all people are unique, and if they are constantly changing each and every day, then all one can say about any social research finding is that it applied to that group of people on that given day, and given the propensity of humans to be different and to change, then it is unlikely that one would get the same results if one were to repeat the study.

— Wayne Dyer

Nothing that I can do will change the structure of the universe. But maybe, by raising my voice I can help the greatest of all causes -- goodwill among men and peace on earth.

— Albert Einstein

All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge.

— Albert Einstein

A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind.

— Albert Einstein

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.

— George Eliot

People wish to be settled. It is only as far as they are unsettled that there is any hope for them.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is change; all yields its place and goes.

— Euripides

When it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.

— Lucius C. Falkland

Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them.

— Owen Felltham

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or emotional appeal.

— Marilyn Ferguson

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.

— Harry Emerson Fosdick

When you're finished changing, you're finished.

— Benjamin Franklin

Sometimes the answer to prayer is not that it changes life, but that it changes you.

— James Dillet Freeman

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

— Robert Frost

Familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behavior, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability.

— J. William Galbraith

Change is inevitable-except from a vending machine.

— Robert C. Gallagher

Be the change you want to see in the world.

— Mahatma Gandhi

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

— Mahatma Gandhi

We must become the change we want to see.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Peak performers see the ability to manage change as a necessity in fulfilling their missions.

— Charles A. Garfield